Knee sprainish thing again?

So... Last year, on August 14th (this time it was the 7th), I worked my knee pretty hard. MCL sprain or something like that. Nothing torn. Spent a lot of time limping around, and also wound up going to the doctor 67 times to get a 500 dollar MRI that came up showing no ligament damage. Still got achy from time to time, but no real problems while running/riding/doing anything.


Anyways, last night, I finally decided to work on heelside 1's, and when I landed I started to slide out of it and fell backward. My legs compressed up against me as they sort of were pinned between my forward moving body and the water. Same knee just explodes in pain. No pop. No swelling. Nothing except for pain, which is now lingering, and my knee doesn't feel all that strong. If it weren't for the injury to the same knee exactly a year ago, I wouldn't really be thinking about it, but because of it, I'm just a little bit worried.

So let's hear the WakeWorld doctor diagnoses, because at this point in time, there's no way in hell that we can afford the 7 trips to the doctors office before they finally give an MRI, which at this point also cannot be afforded.

Questions: What do you think it could be (forward and back instability, pain more on the inside of the knee)? When do you think I could get back to riding. Last year, I got back up as soon as I hurt it and kept on chugging like a moron. It felt fine on the board, it was just when I was floating in the water or crouched down that it hurt.

I'm no doctor but I have the SAME exact thing caused from the SAME motion, only mine was on an over rotated 360.

I thought I tore my MCL. I went to the Ortho and he did the ligament tests and said there was no tear. I've been doing more activity on it, including wakeboarding, than he recommended. Mine does swell and I walked with a limp for a week. It is a LOT better this week but still weak.

If you go to a Doctor they'll either give you an MRI or tell you to rest it. So, if you are not going to an Ortho, just rest it for two weeks. NOTE: I didn't follow his advice and pulled a stomach muscle compensating for the knee.

Do as you will just weigh the consequences.

I think you should get a sharp knife and make a incision right beside the knee and look around.

Seriously though, I just tweaked my knee for the first time in my 16 years of wakeboarding by landing a little stiff on a scarecrow on Sunday. Mine was sore on the outside and when I twisted, but it went away in a couple of days. Maybe you should look at getting a brace. It would be cheaper than a reinjury and surgery.

I'm not a doctor either, but you asked for Wakeworld doctors! Probably a sprained MCL, since it hurts more on the inside. The only thing that heals those is TIME, or R.I.C.E. - Rest Ice Compression Elevation. I've done my MCL many times. This June was the worst. I waited 6 days before I got on the board again, and then it was about 2 weeks of just riding around switch.
If you're determined to be on the water I would recommend trying to get a custom fit Breg or CTI brace. Even though I've been limping around for the past 2 months and probably the next 2 months, I am still able to get out on the water and ride 3 or 4 days a week...I have a sprained Right MCL and Hyperextended Left Knee (possible PCL sprain).

Russell hit the nail on the head with is phrase: "Do as you will just weigh the consequences".

sounds like it could be a PCL strain/tear if it's on the INSIDE of the knee...inside being internally where the leg bones come together.

I have a strained PCL right now....and it feels a little unstable and weak. Deep knee bends hurt the most....other than that it feels strong....

Whatever it is, it's definitely not a tear, since there's not a lot of pain. But it's just enough that it isn't stable. It feels internal on the inside of it, and whereas last night, it felt like front to back didn't have stability, right now it feels more side to side. My dad is going to look into our insurance and if they cover custom knee braces or not. With any luck they'll cover a big percentage of it, and i can cover the rest of the cost. But jeez, this is a pain in the ass. Football, no knee problems, a lot of running and paintball stuff before football, no problems. A month of wake to wakes and a couple of big ones into the flats, and a backroll attempt into the flats, sprained MCL. A year later, off of a 180 behind a deckboat, something else. So exciting. I guess I'll be spending a lot of time rehabbing this crap now.

If it took 7 visits for your MD to figure out what is wrong with you, you should have know in 2 visits that you need to get another MD and/or opinion.
Also if your knee feels unstable when you're walking, many times it means that you tore something fairly important.

BTW if you sheared your ACL or PCL you're not going to have much swelling.
The smartest thing for you to do today is make an appointment to see an Orthopod, preferably not the same one you saw 7x's last year.

Nicola injured herself at the Malibu Open 3 weeks ago.She thought she had hyperextended it. Did therapy,made it worse,went to Ortho and then of couse an MRI.$1000 later = Lateral Tibial bone bruise (with microscopic fracture). Out for who knows how long. Missing the Nationals and the Europeans in France and if she misses Worlds the Q of W title goes as well.............

The gist of the last knee injury was

-Injured
-1 month later, still bothering me - Saw physician at Virginia Tech, moves it around some, tells me it's fine and just to stretch and work out. Did, got a little better, but still really achy.
-Hurt other knee in skateboarding accident, swelled up a ton, but then went down after two days and was completely fine. Went to VT doctors again, different doctor this time. Patella was loose, but it healed up fine. Said it was fine, didn't worry about the swelling, just the large scrape that accompanied it. No more problems. Also addressed already injured knee. Said it was fine again.
-Went to doctor near where I live. Gave it an X-Ray, said "Well, maybe it's a torn meniscus, I'll send you to an orthopedist." So I finally had the doctor recommendation to see a specialist (mandatory for insurance purposes). Go to the specialist, and he tells me it's fine, take these anti-inflammatories for two weeks, let me know how it feels.
-Doesn't get any better, and gets real achy. This is 7 months later. Dad was fired from job two months after injury, and we temp. lost insurance until Jan.
-Go back to the ortho. He says "Here, we'll send you in for an MRI. Schedules it two weeks later.
-Went to MRI, did that, blah blah blah. Three weeks later, I make final visit to ortho, who says "Perfectly fine, here, we'll give you this cortisone shot, and you let us know if there are any more problems."
-Fin


And this time there was NO swelling. Just after I got back to the dock, I stood on that leg specifically and hopped around some, the only pain was from when it was injured and it felt relatively stableish. When I got inside, grabbed my dinky little neoprene stabilizer, put it on for twenty minutes, and then traded that for ice. Took a couple of ibuprofen.

Stability issues didn't really arise until this morning when I got up and came to work. I'm at a theater, so side to side stuff (getting concessions) and a lot of pivoting are pretty common. Begins bothering me a lot, and stability becomes an issue.

It was a huge pain in the ass last year to deal with the 8 thousand doctors appointments when the doctors didn't believe me when I said there was something wrong. I'll be back at tech in a few weeks, and can see the doctors there for free, but I'm not sure if they're even remotely useful. They told a trainer I had for a little while that his sore throat was just that, turned out to be strep...

Oh, and Chris, that sucks man. Sorry to hear that. I'm right in the middle of filming for Gauntlet. I've been specifically working on style stuff, so I've been charging the wake pretty hard, which might be part of the explanation. Anyways, I was supposed to share a section with two people, but I don't have any footage, because up until four weeks ago, I was pretty much just sticking with heelside heroing indy grabs. It was pretty lame. Then I started working on progression and have seen a lot of stuff, come in, but no one has been around to film any of it, so there's no footage of any of my new riding. And with this injury, I may just not be in the video at all, which is going to make editing a certain song to get enough variety kind of hard.

I am just back from a grade 2 mcl tear. Which means slight instability with torn mcl.....and when doing the mcl test there was a limit to how far it could be moved out of joint (meaning mcl was still attached)

after 1 week all feelings of instabitlity or buckling went away. In week 2 I was already doing leg extensions and other exercises....most difficult was pulling the leg up as in a hamstring curl.In week 3 I started wakesurfing...week 4 wakeboarding ...no jumps. I feel about 90% in the knee today. The way its going prob 100% in another 4 weeks or less. (until no trace of injury)

Anyways this is just as a comparison....to maybe give youa better idea how severe your injury is...hope it helps.

nick theres no way for me to be able to tell if any ligaments are injured just from your symptoms. if there is no swelling then im 99% sure you're fine. the way you described the fall...you probably beat up your meniscus a little bit and with the pain being toward the inside its most definately your medial meniscus. no swelling and no locking up?? if thats the case then you should be fine. sounds like you need a good workout routine. you really really really need to be doing some plyometrics 2-3 times a week and weights about once for your legs. prevents alot of injuries. let me know if you need some advice on what to do. im a trainer

Plyometrics does wonders for meniscal tears
Let's see how you really feel after a few set of those.

You can't sort out cartilage tears (meniscus is the covering of cartilage found at the ends of the bones in the knee joint) by working out... You can make the joint stronger and more stable though. The meniscus is also directly attached to the MCL so it might be a tear that is causing you the pain on the inside of your knee. Mind you if you have had a second MRI and that was all clear it probably is in pretty good shape.

I've just done the same kind of thing snowboarding last week. Some turkey tried to go between my brother and me (we were like 2 feet apart riding on a narrow cat track) and bailed right in front of me, I had to dig in to stop or I would have run straight into his back and knocked my brother off the edge of the trail. Had the nose of the board and my right foot dig in real hard and my knee went kind of sideways as it bent. Rode the rest of the day though, no worries, doesn't feel too bad now.

I'm still a few months away from wakeboarding down here so I should be able to get it all good again by Summer.

I'm not a doctor either by the way, I was studying physiotherapy at University though, turned out it wasn't for me, but I still read the books now and then.

That sounds identical to mine Jos. I was thinking about the last time I hurt it, and after thinking, I realized it was an underrotated backroll in the flats, and it put an almost identical pressure on the knee. Although that one was a lot more painful.

With any luck, our insurance will cover knee braces which I'll use to finish out the season and early into next season, and I'll spend the winter rehabbing it and snowboarding to have that leg nice and strong for the wakeboarding season in March. I won't be stupid and only work on the one leg though, I'll work on them together. I like having a perfectly fine knee.

We'll see how it works out in the next few days. It pretty much feels identical to how it felt when I went snowboarding six months after it happened. Kind of painful and kinda unstable. I was fine while I was snowboarding, but the next day it was throbbing. After like, two days the pain went away, and it felt similar, so I'm figuring that it's a sprain or something somehow managed to stretch out, causing the instability, which isn't that bad, it just feels like I have to compensate some for it when I'm turning and stuff while walking. I had to sprint down the hallway at work today and it felt fine... So yar. Sorry to bother yall with this topic of me bitchin and moanin.

Oh, and my knee was pretty close to my face, so I figure I would have heard the pop if I had torn it. Although I was swearing as I fell because I had the thing stuck until I leaned back too much and slid...

(Message edited by wakeboardern1 on August 07, 2008)

Oh, and my knee was pretty close to my face, so I figure I would have heard the pop if I had torn it.

Not true what so ever.
You don't have to hear or feel a "pop" when an ACL tears.

I have to schedule a trip to the ortho myself. Right knee was scoped four years ago. Big double up, landed flat, immediate knee swelling. Nursed it a little for a couple weeks, still not feeling better, but jammed it up again on a big crow. Landed hard enough to break the base plate on my binding. Taking it easy again.
What's weird though is that the swelling is down, but I've lost some range of motion. It hurts to fully extend my leg. There is a lot of tension on my upper calf where it meets the back of my knee.
I plan on nursing it through the rest of the season, and getting whatever is wrong fixed in the off season.

Fantastic news! My dad's new company is taking away his "temporary" insurance plan um, on the 15th! We have a family friend who is a doctor, so we're going to see if he can't prescribe a knee brace to wear to finish off the season and for the beginning of the next season (rehab over the winter, if it doesn't get better, hopefully we'll have insurance again come jan.) before the insurance runs out. They'll cover 75 percent of it, but it has to be prescribed, sooo yeah.

Btw, beginning to think it's just another sprain, as the pain seems to be in various places in the knee, which the orthopedist last time said is "a good sign..."

Awesssommme. Ortho says it's a MCL sprain, and that if I wear a stabilizer and these anti-inflammatory patches I'll be good as new. He also said that I can still ride, just to take it easier for a week or so. And when I get back to blacksburg, he done written me an order to go to a physical therapist, get shown what to do, and then do regular physical therapy on my own. Should be better than before in no time.

BALLIN!

glad to hear it's nothing major. you may still want to be careful as it kind of sounds like you may have bruised your tibia or femur. there's nothing a doctor can do about that, but it will make your bones more susceptible to fracture in the mean time.

what?? bruised tibia or femur?? who?? by the way thats great nick! i dont know what this guy is talkin about